Features — January 2026

Essays | Themes | Research

Student Star, Teaching Star,
and now TV Star

— by George Hyde

With the New Year 2026 but a few hours away, I was safely ensconced in my favorite recliner enjoying the University of Miami Hurricanes as they embarrassed the vaunted Ohio State Buckeyes in the College Football playoffs. After tolerating countless ads for personal injury attorneys, snow-covered pickup trucks, and cookie-munching replacement-window pitch men, I pulled out my iPhone when the ESPN broadcast crew sandwiched in another commercial break and plunged back into the RW (“Real World”).

But wait! Not so fast! Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a familiar face in the opening shot of an ad commemorating the first class of the University of South Florida — none other than Jeanne Dyer, Coordinator of OLLI’s Technology Courses for more than a decade — and student ID #260 in that very first USF undergrad class — a devoted lifelong learner now adding “TV Star” to her credits as “Student Star” and “Teaching Star”! And I decided to help you understand more about the remarkable accomplishments of this legendary OLLI performer.

For many OLLI members, the Technology classes created and managed by Jeanne over the past 18 years have been the “gateway drugs” that got us “Hooked on OLLI” — hundreds of hands-on classes that demystified computers and cell phones so that senior learners don’t have to rely on our grandchildren for (occasionally condescending) technical tips.

But there’s much more to this story of one of USF’s first alumnae, beginning with her childhood in West Tampa. Daughter of a seamstress and the supervisor of bellhops at downtown Tampa’s Floridan Hotel, Jeanne attended “the original” Jefferson High School, spicing up her weekend with local dances featuring “The Fabulous Rockers” and occasional concerts by superstars like Elvis Presley and Pat Boone — concerts staged at the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory site now occupied by the Glazer Family JCC , the site of several recent OLLI Open House events and classes.

The creation of an affordable local university ($200 for 15 credit hours) opened the door for Jeanne to become the first member of her immediate family to attend college, and the upsurge in post-Sputnik funding for science education helped propel her to educating future scientists for the front lines of the “Space Race”.

Asked about positive influences on her life and career, Jeanne quickly credits USF Chemistry Professor Jack Fernandez: “He was my major professor, and a true Renaissance man. He was such an inspiration to me; even today, I would really enjoy the opportunity to spend another 15 minutes in conversation with him.” (Professor Fernandez is deceased, but his legacy lives on at USF, as his son, Rudy Fernandez, is a popular OLLI instructor on subjects related to Financial Planning for Seniors and the History and Culture of Cuba.)

After graduation, Jeanne taught in the Baltimore (MD) area for four years, while earning her Master’s in Chemistry Education at Morgan State University before returning to Tampa for a 36-year career in Hillsborough County Schools — Plant, King, Chamberlain, Gaither, and Sickles High Schools among them. Her excellence as a Science educator has been recognized with scores of awards including the first-ever USF Outstanding Teacher Award (1986, repeated in 1991), and selection by the American Chemistry Society as the “Outstanding Chemistry Teacher in the Southeast Region of the U.S.”

With that type of recognition, Jeanne became a frequent participant in national science conventions, and research programs funded by the National Science Foundation, where she encountered “one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met”: Glenn Seaborg, Nobel Prize-winning discoverer of 10 elements including Plutonium and “Element 106,” later named “Seaborgium” in his honor.

In validation of her research on the creation and superconductivity properties of “fullerenes,” a new structural form of the element Carbon, Jeanne was selected to participate in another NSF-funded summer program at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island. Nicknamed “buckyballs” after geodesic-dome designer Buckminster Fuller, the “fullerenes” are a critical element in ongoing research to slow down the progression of age-associated decline — a subject of obvious importance to us those of us in the “OLLI years” — and may play important roles in modulating the effects of age-related diseases including cardiovascular problems and some types of cancer. Fullerenes are currently used in efforts to reduce side effects of drugs like Doxorubicin which are used to treat a variety of cancers (breast, bladder, ovarian, lung, stomach, etc.) but which may cause intense side effects. Jeanne’s research experimented with ways to involve her high school students in cutting-edge science, enabling them to isolate and test fullerenes using the high school chemistry lab.

Through selection for the NSF programs, Jeanne made the acquaintance of another of her “most interesting people” — Bassam Shakhashiri, a former President of the American Chemical Society, longtime head of Science and Education at the National Science Foundation, and Advisor to U.S. Presidents from Truman to Clinton. Shakhashiri spent much of his career celebrating “the fun of science” with presentations at schools, colleges, and farmers’ markets, and one of Jeanne’s successful grant requests helped create a similar series of chemical magic shows for elementary schoolers in Hillsborough County. (Shakhashiri has produced at least seven “Science is Fun” Christmas-season programs for Wisconsin PBS, videos of which are available at http://scifun.org).

Demystifying science for young and old is a recurring theme with both Shakhashiri and Dyer, and a fundamental consideration in the courses Jeanne develops and supervises.

And what about the future? Jeanne readily admits that she would like to have had the opportunity to hear what Steve Jobs thinks the future might bring us, but she does suggest that Artificial Intelligence will be an inescapable part of our future, and that OLLI-agers should take every opportunity to learn more about AI’s capabilities and how to use them in our daily lives. (At least a half-dozen OLLI courses this term deal with these subjects.)

What’s the most significant technological threat to our well-being in the coming years? According to Jeanne, it’s getting “hacked” and having our personal information stolen or abused — subjects which are regularly being addressed in the OLLI curriculum.

Other passionate interests for this “first class” USF alumna? Surprisingly, begonias and orchids rank high on the list, and she considers the jungles of Ecuador — where she spent two weeks on a fern-gathering expedition — to be the most fascinating place she’s ever visited.

Finally, what makes Jeanne feel happy at the end of the day? “Knowing that I’ve learned something new” is Jeanne’s response — and now you have, too!

George Hyde, a graduate of Brown University, holds an MBA and is a veteran radio broadcaster who served as Executive VP, Radio Advertising Bureau; Vice Chairman, National Association of Broadcasters; and Florida Regional Vice President for a major radio group. George spent his career in radio, both on-air and behind the scenes. His passion for accurate information and critical thinking has led to the creation of many memorable OLLI courses.